I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to flexible multiprocessor data processing systems and more particularly to such systems adapted to provide computerized management of alarm data from a plurality of geographically dispersed sources and for advising municipal authorities such as public service answering points (PSAPs), police, fire or EMS departments of the particulars of those alarms.
II. Description of the Prior Art
A typical alarm reporting system monitors a variety of subscribing residences or businesses connected, such as by telephone lines, to a security company's central station ("CS") whereat electronic signals are received from the monitored location(s) in the event an alarm is triggered such as due to fire or break-in or the like. Upon receipt of that signal, in accordance with the central station's protocol, an operator at the central station telephones the appropriate municipal authority or authorities (such as the police or fire department or both) and orally advises the emergency services operator of the appropriate alarm information. The police or fire services or other necessary emergency services would then be dispatched by the operator. At the same time, other security company central stations as well as various members of the public may be trying to call the municipal authorities for emergency assistance. With such a typical alarm reporting system, multiple, simultaneous calls may thus tie up the emergency services operators causing sometimes tragic delays in response times. Indeed, in the event of a disaster, such as a hurricane, tornado or large scale fire, for example, the volume of calls generated by a single emergency occurrence may be so overwhelming that the operators simply can not process them all. The volume of calls might even be so excessive that the equipment is shut down. In that event, or should the municipal authority otherwise encounter difficulty, the caller may not know that alternative action must be taken to summon assistance. Also, false alarms cannot be easily cancelled in which event limited emergency service resources are caused to respond while another, real emergency, possibly goes unanswered.
It has been proposed to computerize the interconnection between security company central stations and the municipal authority, thus reducing some of the sources of tie ups and the possibility of human error. But such proposed computerized systems have not otherwise overcome many of the problems with currently employed methods. Moreover, the proposed computerized systems have generally required that each security company central station have a computer that is not only equipped with a database containing all the necessary information (such as address, contact persons, special warnings or cautions, nearest police departments, etc.) for each of its subscribers, but which is also powerful enough to process alarm data for each subscriber encountering an alarm condition and compile the necessary reports for electronic transmission to the municipal authorities, all without significant delays. Such hardware is costly and places control of the various computers in the hands of central station operators where error may occur and be difficult to locate. Similarly, standardization is not established as a consequence of which each and every police, fire or EMS department or every PSAP or other municipal authority may be required to have a plurality of terminals adapted to communicate with the respective security company computers making the operation of those municipal authorities not only costly but prone to error and, again, leading to significant delays while the various terminals are monitored by the operators.